


snot-nosed little brat

by gingerbread man (xphantomhive)



Category: Homestuck
Genre: Alpha Timeline, Blood, General fluff, Kissing, M/M, Memories, Post-Scratch, gay boys with lots of feelings, jane is john's incredibly protective mother, mentioned fight
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-02-15
Updated: 2016-02-15
Packaged: 2018-05-20 15:24:29
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Underage
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,579
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6013987
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/xphantomhive/pseuds/gingerbread%20man
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>You hate the fact that you love him, because he's so much younger than you in this timeline, and the fact that you want to kiss him so badly makes you sick. You stop caring about it when he stops.</p>
            </blockquote>





	snot-nosed little brat

_bury me standing under your window with the cinder block in hand_

_yeah, 'cause no one will ever feel like this again_

_and if i could move i'm sure it would only be to crawl back to you_

_i must have dragged my guts a block and they were gone by the time we_

;;

He’s a snot-nosed twelve year old brat in a pair of ripped cargo shorts and a _Ghostbusters_ shirt, and whenever you try to ask his mom a question he cuts you off. She does the apologizing for him, and you tell her that it’s fine five times over before decidedly giving her the job as your secretary without an interview because she seems plenty qualified as it is. The corner of her mouth quirks up and she thanks you softly. The brat tells you that he thinks your movies are bad and critics do too, and you say, “That’s the point.”

He tells you it’s a dumb point.

+

Her name is Jane Crocker and his is John Crocker, and she stutters over her words when she explains to you that she has to bring him to work with her because she can’t afford schooling and she teaches him during the weekend. His dad ran out on them both after he was born, and his older sister ran away when he was six and she was eleven. He becomes your problem while she works, and he just won’t _stop_ touching all of the things in your office with his grubby, Cheeto-stained little tween hands.

“What kind of camera is this?” He asks you one day, turning your Kodak that cost a pretty penny over in his hands, the one you use specifically for photography.

“Kodak,” you reply offhandedly, turning to face him. Your script can wait. “Kid, I thought you were into criticizing movies? Didn’t take you as the photography type.”

“Yeah, well I thought you were only into directing movies and scriptwriting, so we’re both wrong here,” he replies with a heavy dose of sass. “I don’t really like photography. My sister tried to teach me before she left. She liked adventuring just like my dad, and she told me that before I was born they’d go on fun adventures and take a lot of pictures. Mom still has some.”

A heavy silence hangs between the two of you, and you’re just kind of staring at him in shock because you’d never expect him to just blurt something like that out to you. He clears his throat and turns away to put your camera back on the shelf he’d taken it from, and you think there might be tears in his eyes. “Uh, I’m gonna go. Do a thing. Around my mom. She assigned me a five page essay yesterday, and I should probably get it done before next Saturday or she’ll be mad.”

You watch him leave, and wonder what the hell goes on in his brain.

+

On the day of his thirteenth birthday, John doesn’t act like most kids do. He won’t eat any of the cake his mom baked for him, and when she tries to ask him how it feels to be a teenager officially, he dodges all of her questions. He kisses her cheek and wishes her a happy birthday, since they’ve apparently both born on April thirteenth, and then he holes himself up in your office. You try to act like you’re annoyed, but you don’t really mind it.

“One time,” he says, and you pretend you aren’t listening but you are. “Someone got me a bunny for my thirteenth birthday. It was dirty and gross but it was a prop from _Con Air_. You have that bunny, don’t you? I bet you have it in a glass case or something stupidly sentimental like that, and I bet you have it guarded with the strongest security system they make, and I bet you claim that it’s all for irony. Who are your shades from, again?”

You feel bad for wanting to punch this kid so much. He has no right knowing all of this shit about you, or “betting” that he knows all of this shit about you, but he does. He has all the rights to knowing all of this shit, you could say. He’s waited for you for a long time now. Years, decades, eons, but who’s counting? “Ben Stiller. Everyone knows that.”

He laughs, and it’s haughty and right behind you. “But someone got them for you for their thirteenth birthday once, didn’t they? To help you spread your wings a little. To help you get out of your brother’s shadow that you were always hiding in like a scared little baby.”

“Shut your fucking mouth, Crocker,” you say through a closing throat. “You don’t know fucking anything, so stop pretending that you do. You’re a snotty brat and you think you know better than everyone else.”

He shrugs, and you know because you hear the fabric of his shirt rustle. Today it’s a _Little Monsters_ shirt that his mom bought him for his birthday. “I don’t think I know better. I know that I do. You don’t have to be a seer to know that.”

For the first time in seven months, you kick him out of your office.

+

By January Jane’s made enough money to send John to public school, so you get some peace and quiet during the day. You let her leave to pick him up but make her promise she’ll come back to finish her work, and she smiles gently at you and nods. When she brings him back to the office on the first day, his _Con Air_ shirt is covered in blood and his glasses are cracked.

“What the fuck happened?” You ask, and you try not to sound like you’re angry about the fact that he obviously got beaten up, even though you are. There’s a gash on the corner of his forehead that reaches all the way to the middle of his cheek, and you don’t think all of the blood he’s wearing is actually his.

“I don’t know, he refuses to tell me!” Jane yells exasperatedly, dabbing at the cut on his face that’s still bleeding. She hands him an ice pack and he shoves it over his eye, and for the first time you notice that it’s black and blue and swelling something fierce. “But when he tells me what happened and I figure out why, by golly I will _murder_ each and every person who hurt my baby boy and each and every person who didn’t do shit to stop it!”

Jane’s getting a little aggressive with her dabbing, so you tell her that you’ll take over and that she should probably go get some fresh air. She breathes and nods, and once she’s out of the office John spits out, “They told me my dad left because my mom was a whore and I was ugly. They told me that my sister left because she hated me and couldn’t stand being around me. I don’t know how they even knew the things that happened to me.”

You toss the paper towel out because it’s soaked in blood and the gash seems to have stopped bleeding, anyway. “Kids can find anything out, John. They’re fuckin’ _teens._ Teens are even worse, they fuckin’ live and thrive in an area with tons of juicy gossip. ‘Specially when it involves a new kid who won’t know what the fuck hit ‘im.”

“My mom isn’t a whore.”

“I know, John.”

“I’m not that bad looking.”

"You aren’t, John.”

“My sister left because she wanted to adventure. She doesn’t hate me.”

“Of course not, John.”

He’s crying, wiping tears off of his cheeks fiercely, smearing the blood from his nose that Jane hadn’t cleaned off yet over the bridge of his nose and his cheeks. You lean forward and kiss the cut, and he looks at you like you’d pushed your mouths together and stuck your tongue in his mouth. “Would it be okay if I kissed you?” He asks quietly, playing with his fingers.

This is wrong. You feel sick thinking about it. He’s only thirteen, still a kid, and you’re almost twenty-five. He’s too young for you in this timeline, and it isn’t fair. It isn’t fair, because you love him and you know he loves you, and you wish the game hadn’t have cheated you out of that because it meant everything to you. He looks up at you through his lashes. You gulp.

“John-”

“Dave.”

You guess he’s fed up with waiting for an answer, because he leans forward on the heels of his hands and mushes your mouths together. It’s uncoordinated and terrible, kiss of someone who’s never done this before, but you melt into it anyway. When he pulls back, he only moves enough so that he has room to breathe, but he leaves his forehead pressed to yours. “I waited for centuries for you to be older than me. Old enough that dating me is counted as immoral.”

“I love you,” you offer.

He starts crying again.

“I love you too,” he chokes back through tears.

+

You give him the bunny for his fourteenth birthday, and he holds it to his chest like you’d given him ten pounds of expensive gold.

“You’re a year late,” he says, twining the ear around his finger.

“You’re a little asshole,” you respond.

He kisses you.

**Author's Note:**

> hoped you liked this! i guess i was in a writing mood, heh.
> 
> the lyrics are from "the pros and cons of breathing" by fall out boy.
> 
> because i really love fall out boy.


End file.
